Earth map with ice caps melted

[GreyWanderer]

This is supposed to be earth if the ice caps melted. I'm wondering if it's accurate or not. Anyone?

 

[geni]

This is supposed to be earth if the ice caps melted. I'm wondering if it's accurate or not. Anyone?

It appears to be a picture of earth with the ice caps removes rathe than melted. evern so that is still not correct as large parts of antartica are below sea level evern at the monent and it is only the ice cap on top that keeps it above the surface. Also way too much of the UK is above sea level.

 

[DangerousBeliefs]

Who can say? Just remember though, much of the weight of the ice is already accounted for. Melting it will only have a small impact on land masses (small in big picture terms).

 

[Ursa Major]

I'd always thought a melting of the caps would effectively shave a lot of real estate off the coastline of each continent. Instead, this map seems to indicate that the most drastic changes would be river deltas like the Mississippi, Plata and Amazon becoming bays or giant lakes. The Balck and Caspian Seas also appear much larger.

For comparison:

 

[Dorian Gray]

If just the Arctic cap melts, wouldn't the sea levels get lower, since ice is denser than water? Or at least, not rise?

 

[GreyWanderer]

If just the Arctic cap melts, wouldn't the sea levels get lower, since ice is denser than water? Or at least, not rise?

I think there would be no difference. It's the Antarctic that counts anyway.

I guess it was just a typo, but ice is LESS dense than water.

 

[CFLarsen]

Re: Re: Earth map with ice caps melted

This is supposed to be earth if the ice caps melted. I'm wondering if it's accurate or not. Anyone?

Denmark, New York and Florida are gone!!!

It appears to be a picture of earth with the ice caps removes rathe than melted.

(cough) It's melted alright....

 

[fishbob]

Florida, Cuba, much of Louisiana, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are gone. Many of the major river deltas are submerged. This seems about right given what I recall about melting the ice caps.

The Arctic ice cap is floating - melt it and sea level will not change at all. Melting the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps would dump a lot of fresh water, that is currently on land, into the oceans and raise sea level by somewhere around 200 feet, if I recall correctly.

This has been done on topo maps many times - calculate how much water is tied up in the ice caps, figure out how much sea level will rise if you add this much water to the oceans, then take a crayon and color everything below that elevation blue.

 

[Chaos]

There is one mistake with GreyWanderer´s map: below the ice pack, the Antarctic is actually two land masses with a sea between them.

 

[Jon_in_london]

Great, we can fight WWIII over Antarctica!

 

[mummymonkey]

Where will all the Americans go to die?

 

[Dorian Gray]

Yeah, LESS dense. Oops. Why it floats, sort of thing.

 

[PygmyPlaidGiraffe]

Re: Re: Earth map with ice caps melted

It appears to be a picture of earth with the ice caps removes rathe than melted. evern so that is still not correct as large parts of antartica are below sea level evern at the monent and it is only the ice cap on top that keeps it above the surface. Also way too much of the UK is above sea level.

Are large parts of Antartica below sea level because of the immense mass of ice that is causing displacement? Or is that counter intuitive? If the caps melted off, would the Antarctic land mass's elevations rise?

maybe I will attempt to explain myself here:

the Antarctic plate or plates sit on an a malleable mantle,

,

how would this model affect Antarctica's elevation?

 

[bjornart]

Well, I don't know how much sea level would rise, but even if you assume that figure is correct there are a couple of errors. Maybe. The maps I have available aren't accurate enough to tell whether or not the Caspian would be connected to the ocean with rising sea level. But although the 400km stretch from the Black sea could be anywhere between 0 and 200m above sea level I'd be willing to bet there's enough elevation there to keep the ocean out. And in that case the Caspian will keep drying up and be lower and lower beneath sea level.
The Antarctic would indeed be divided if you shock melted all the ice, but like Norther Europe after the last ice age it would start rising. How much and how fast I don't know.

 

[WildCat]

Where will all the Americans go to die?

Looks like Arizona is still wide open, if the Canadians can be kept out.

Greetings from the North Coast!

 

[tracer]

In order for the arctic and (huge) antarctic ice caps to melt, global average temperatures would have to rise by a staggering amount.

And if that were to happen, the thermal expansion of the oceans would cause a bigger rise in sea level than all that melted ice would!

 

[Ursa Major]

In order for the arctic and (huge) antarctic ice caps to melt, global average temperatures would have to rise by a staggering amount.

And if that were to happen, the thermal expansion of the oceans would cause a bigger rise in sea level than all that melted ice would!

Can you explain thermal expansion to me? Also, wouldn't significantly higher temperatures create far more water vapor in the atmosphere, thus removing vast amounts of water from the oceans?

 

[geni]

Can you explain thermal expansion to me? Also, wouldn't significantly higher temperatures create far more water vapor in the atmosphere, thus removing vast amounts of water from the oceans?

Thermal expansion is when things expand when they get hot. If you consider the amount of water in the ocens even a tempreture rise of one degree would result in a considerble rise in sea level. As to the water vaper it should be rembered that water vaper is a greenhouse gas so more water vaper in the atmosphere would probably not be good news.

 

[DangerousBeliefs]

Thermal expansion is when things expand when they get hot.

Interestingly though.... H20 is exactly the OPPOSITE of other "things".

It expands when it cools and starts changing to a solid.

But don't believe me... take a capped new bottle of soda and stick it in the freezer. Wait several hours and what do you get? A BIG MESS

Try it with a 2 liter bottle for extra fun.

 

[Ziggurat]

Interestingly though.... H20 is exactly the OPPOSITE of other "things".

It expands when it cools and starts changing to a solid.

Water only expands on cooling below about 4 deg. C (a little above the freezing point). Above that it's got a positive coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning that water above 4 deg. C will expand when heated, not when cooled.